'Lucky Malone's Not So Lucky Night' is an interactive comedy murder mystery.

The Pines Dinner Theatre in Allentown is serving up murder and mayhem as it takes its audiences back to 1928 with its new show, "Lucky Malone's Not So Lucky Night."

The interactive comedy, premiering Friday, will take you to Lucky Malone's speakeasy in an original play written and directed by Oliver Blatt.

Lucky Malone has lots of money, a beautiful doll on each arm and a successful speakeasy. But all that is about to change when an old nemesis appears and tries to steal his club and his women. The audience takes part in the adventure and anything can happen.

Colorful characters Benny Bigside, Moxie Hart, Zelda Zigglar and Jonny Two Times join Lucky along with the nightclub band The Westcoast Ramblers (which comprises Stacy Bechtel on banjo and Blatt on piano).

Allentown Public Theatre will present Stephanie E. Gardner's play "The Man Who Invented Himself" as part of its monthly reading series, Theatre Cafe. The informal reading will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Hava Java, 526 N. 19th St., Allentown.

The series debuted in October and features script-in-hand readings of plays, many by local playwrights. It is held the third Tuesday of each month.

Gardner, an Emmaus playwright and filmmaker, brings the newest draft of her biographical play about a Hungarian Life magazine photographer to the series.

Andre Friedmann is a struggling photographer who meets a spunky revolutionary, Gerda Taro, in a Paris bar in 1935. Together they scheme to create a persona, Robert Capa, an American photographer "in high demand," in order to sell photos at better prices in Europe. Along the way, he teaches photography to Taro. Traveling through Spain during the Spanish Civil War for Life magazine, they capture moments of war and peace. Among them is Capa's iconic "Fallen Soldier" image, the first known photograph of a man at the instant of his death.

As the two bring the front lines to middle America, they fall in love. When Friedmann asks Taro to marry him, she must confront the issue of the persona they've created and her desire to be a photographer in her own right.

Gardner earned her MFA in film and dramatic writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and has taken classes with Sabrina Dhawan ("Monsoon Wedding"), Todd Solondz ("Happiness"), Oliver Stone ("Platoon"), and Richard Wesley ("Uptown Saturday Night").

Gardner says she learned about Capa in an Amsterdam photography exhibit and was immediately drawn to him.

"I kept coming back to Robert Capa, not only because I'm an artist, but the idea of creating a new identity is compelling," she says. "It's the perfect scenario for that creative question, What if . . .?"

"Once the Musical" the winner of eight Tony awards including best musical in 2012, comes to the Academy of Music in Philadelphia Friday through Sunday.

The show tells the story of a Dublin street musician who's about to give up on his dream when a young Czech woman takes a sudden interest in his love songs.

The show is unusual in that it features actor/musicians who play their own instruments on stage.

Bethlehem resident Lynn Flickinger, who teaches voice performance at Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts in Bethlehem, understudies Baruska, the mother of the Czech girl. The role is played by Patricia Bartlett.

Flickinger says she responded to the audition for someone who could play the piano.

"It's a very special show that requires a whole different set of skills," she says. "I had to learn to play the accordion."

She says it is her first time as an understudy and you "have to prepare as if you are going on."

She describes Baruska as a "salt of the earth type who takes care of everybody and says what needs to be said."

The show, which won the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, is based on the Academy Award-winning film. It features music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova.

"It's a wonderful show and the music is fantastic," Flickinger says. "It resonates with almost everyone. It's not a typical musical. In this show music is what the characters do. It's a part of the story."

In the show the chemistry between the guy, played by Sam Cieri, and the girl, played by Mackenzie Lesser-Roy, grows, helping the guy's music to grow.

Flickinger says the show starts with a pre-show in which the cast members have a jam session on the stage, which is set up like an Irish pub. As the cast plays Irish folk and Czech tunes, the audience is invited up and becomes a part of the show.

Flickinger, who has taken a six-month leave of absence from her teaching job, says her school encourages teachers to work in the arts.

"This has been great for my students," she says. "They get to see the experience of the audition process and also lets them see it's not easy and not all glamour."

Before coming to the Charter Arts School two years ago, Flickinger taught at DeSales University for 10 years where she was in shows including "Sweeney Todd," "Man of La Mancha" and "Carousel."

She also appeared in the Carnegie Hall premiere of "Fanny Lou" and will play Mrs. Gabor in the upcoming film adaptation of "Spring Awakening." She also performs jazz in the Lynne Flick Trio.

Arden Theatre Company presents the world premiere of "Funnyman" by Bruce Graham, one of Philadelphia's leading playwrights. The play, which opens Thursday, is directed by Matt Pfeiffer and stars Carl Wallnau, both of whom are familiar faces from Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.

The play is set in New York City in 1959, where Chick Sherman, an aging comic, played by Wallnau, grasping to remain relevant in the ever-changing world of show biz, tries to revive his career with a starring turn in an avant-garde off-Broadway play. Meanwhile, his daughter struggles to uncover truths from her childhood that her father would rather keep hidden.

This is the Arden's fourth presentation of a Bruce Graham work, including the seven-time Barrymore Award-winning "Something Intangible." Like that play, which was inspired by brothers Roy and Walt Disney during the early days of animation, "Funnyman" also explores the connection between show business and family relationships, this time during the early days of television.

Graham was inspired to write "Funnyman" after reading John Lahr's book "Confessions of a Cowardly Lion," in which he writes about his father, Burt Lahr, in "Waiting for Godot." He was also inspired by all the great vaudevillians and great comics who tried to find new relevance as TV and film became more popular.

"This play is set at a time when art forms were changing," Graham says. "Comedy was changing and so, too, was the world of theater. Stuff that played in the '20s and '30s just didn't work anymore after World War II. Artists had to adapt and that wasn't always easy."

"I have always been fascinated by the world of comedy," he says. "We don't take comics seriously. I used to be a stand-up comic and it's tough. You look at great comedians like Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey. They are terrific at what they do, but rarely get the critical respect they deserve. That always bothered me."

DeSales University graduate Pfeiffer directed "Henry V" at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival and Wallnau appeared in repertory in "Henry V" and "The Foreigner" in 2015.